Coming Full Circle: from Intern to Manager
Did you know Illumina has had an internship program since 2015? We have over 400 intern alumni who have continued to innovate and grow in their careers—many of whom have done so at Illumina.
Given the competitive job market for students, we know an internship is a great way to get your foot in the door, build your network, and ideally connect to a full-time employment opportunity. We aim to convert as many of our interns to full-time hires as possible and have been proud to watch many of them take on leadership roles within the company, specifically as people managers.
Coming full circle, we sat down with four of our prior interns who are now either managing teams—or interns of their own!
Kayla Herb
?Ileena Mitra
Shiela Murali
Muthu Vishwanath
What and where did you study?
Muthu: I graduated with a master’s in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Illumina was my first complete industrial internship experience.
Ileena: My undergraduate degree was in bioengineering at UC Santa Cruz (yay Banana Slugs!), and my graduate degree was in bioinformatics at UC San Diego (just down the road from Illumina headquarters).
Shiela: I came to the internship as a career switcher, while getting my MBA at UCLA Anderson School of Management. My career before school was in financial services (valuation) and in clinic acquisitions.
Kayla: I studied biomedical engineering for my undergrad, with minors in math and Spanish at Johns Hopkins University, and I am currently pursuing my MBA at Johns Hopkins.
Tell us about your journey from intern to full-time employee. When did you join Illumina full time, and how did you progress into your current role managing an intern or team?
Muthu: I started out as a data analyst intern during the summer of 2015. After my internship, I stayed in touch with my Illumina network and got invited to return as a full-time employee by the end of that year. Even though I had six months of grad school left, Illumina was gracious enough to sponsor my work visa and onboard me immediately. Illumina also supported me with the work-life balance needed to complete my grad school while working as a full-time employee. I started out as a process engineer working on various process and product improvement projects, which allowed me to build a deeper understanding of our products, as well as the business. I was able to leverage this knowledge to continue growing as an individual contributor. More recently, I was provided an opportunity to lead a team to drive customer satisfaction initiatives focused on product quality. I’m looking forward to honing my people management skills while continuing to build on my technical skills.
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Ileena: I was absolutely thrilled to be selected for Illumina’s 2019 internship with the Oncology Market Development department. During my internship, I assessed the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the oncology health care landscape. I loved the forward-thinking and innovative ideas the Market Development team evaluated, and more broadly, I loved the open and collaborative Illumina company culture. After I earned my PhD in bioinformatics, I was eager to work at the intersection of AI and genomics, and I knew that Illumina was the best place to do that! I felt like I found my dream job when I joined Illumina’s Genome Interpretation Research and Development department in 2021. I’ve been working on implementing AI technology to interpret population genomics data to better diagnose and treat patients.
Shiela: I was an MBA intern with the Corporate Strategy team in the summer of 2018 and was lucky enough to join the team full time after graduation in August 2019. Since then, I’ve continued to learn and grow in my role. Last summer, I had the pleasure of helping guide our two amazing interns, and this summer, I got to formalize the role and officially serve as a manager for our awesome incoming intern.
Kayla: I joined Illumina in the fall of 2015, immediately after my internship ended. I started out working in the same group that I had interned with, which was called Life Cycle Management (LCM) at the time. I spent time in my first year as an employee really learning how the various manufacturing areas interact with each other and how our products work on a detailed level. I found my niche supporting our Fully Functional Nucleotide (FFN) manufacturing line, and was given my first independent projects to own. Over the first few years, I developed an interest in our new product introductions and spent time learning from more-senior engineers what was involved in those types of projects. I started managing an intern under this team, and loved creating a meaningful experience for someone and giving back to the program that sparked my own interest in process development. As the scope of work expanded, I now have the opportunity to manage a team and continue to develop the next generation of process development engineers.
What do you think has made you successful at Illumina? What advice do you have for those interested in pursuing an internship or career with us?
Muthu: Having an open mind and embracing change is a necessary part of how we operate as a company. I’ve come to appreciate the fact that career growth is not necessarily a straight ladder; it can also be a tree with branches on all sides. Being open to new opportunities has not only helped my career growth but has also allowed me to add additional skill sets.
Shiela: I think the two big things are a sense of curiosity and a collaborative nature. Being genuinely excited and curious to learn more and dig deeper helps make the outcome that much better (and makes me more informed!). We are also super collaborative here at Illumina. We rely on all the smart people around the organization to provide thought partnership, deep subject matter expertise, and alternative viewpoints to help us get to a solution. To those interested in working at Illumina, I’d say: show your passion for our mission and the impact on patient health we are striving for. Also, showcase your ability to be collaborative and flexible.
Kayla: I think being flexible and adapting to change has made me successful at Illumina. We move quickly, and being able to go with the flow as we learn and change course is critical for long-term success. I also think being willing to speak up, contribute your ideas, and respectfully challenge others is how we all improve collectively and advance science. My advice for anyone interested in pursuing an internship or career with us would be to be curious and learn as much as you can, but also contribute your own unique ideas and thoughts so we can all succeed together.
What projects did you work on during your internship? What did a typical day as an intern look like for you?
Muthu: I used to spend the first half of my day setting up and running experiments needed to generate the data. The second half of the day was usually spent analyzing the data collected and consulting with my team to draw inferences and plan for the following day. I enjoyed the opportunity to do both—get my hands wet in the morning and exercise my data analysis skills in the afternoon.
Ileena: During my internship, I assessed the use of AI technology in the oncology health care landscape. I loved the forward-thinking and innovative ideas the Market Development team evaluated, and more broadly, I loved the open and collaborative Illumina company culture. It was incredible to have the opportunity to share my proposals in meetings with senior managers and VPs, who provided feedback and helped me refine my ideas.
Shiela: I got to work on a project looking at a clinical area to assess the state of the market, the potential opportunity, and what Illumina could and should do in the space. My days were spent doing research into where the clinical evidence was pointing, talking to key opinion leaders and internal stakeholders, brainstorming and workshopping the story and solutions with my team, and finally putting it all together to build a cohesive narrative about the opportunity.
How does it feel to know your work is helping people all over the world?
Ileena: Illumina’s mission is closely tied to my own goal to do meaningful work to help people and make the world a better place. Not only is Illumina a global leader in DNA sequencing, we’re also doing a lot of really cool cutting-edge work for building big-data technology, cancer companion diagnostics, therapeutic discovery, and other novel applications. It’s exciting to be at Illumina during the midst of the “genomic revolution,” because we get to be part of creating new and innovative applications of genomics. I find it truly rewarding to be improving human health and want to encourage others, especially women, to get into the biotech space.
Kayla: Nothing replaces the feeling of knowing your work is doing good in the world. My mom was diagnosed with leukemia when I was in middle school and was fortunate to receive treatment through a drug called Gleevec. Gleevec was one of the first targeted cancer treatments that was administered as a daily pill. She went into complete remission with none of the common cancer treatment side effects—she never lost her hair, she never had to miss work, she never stopped exercising. This experience really gave me a firsthand look at what the future could look like for cancer patients, and as I learned more about the origins of cancer as a genetic illness, I found my mission. Working at Illumina on these technologies is beyond rewarding, because I know my work is going to reshape the experience of patients like my mom.
What makes Illumina’s internship program unique? Why did you choose it?
Ileena: Illumina is a great place to start a career. The people I’ve worked with across San Diego and Foster City are extraordinarily bright and genuinely open to teaching and encouraging early-career individuals to succeed. For interns, there’s a lot to learn in terms of the science, technology, and business, and intern managers are available every step of the way to help.
Kayla: Illumina’s internship program is unique because it not only gives you a realistic look into what it’s like to work as an Illumina employee, it also ensures that you have professional development so you can be successful in your career regardless of what your future holds. It challenges you to use your background and skills and apply them to real problems because you’re seen as someone with valuable experience to bring to the table from day one. I chose the Illumina internship program because I really believe in the company’s mission and I knew I might want to work for Illumina as my full-time career after college. The internship gave me a chance to experience the culture of Illumina firsthand and try out a career path before accepting a full-time position. Ultimately, the culture, the mission, and the people I met during my internship showed me what a great place Illumina was and made my decision to stay on full-time very easy.